The Medieval Murderers - The Tainted Relic

Then she too rose from her chair and came around to him.

‘Call Lucille to bring my mantle. I’ll come with you to see Richard-but only to keep that woman from the cells. I’ll not interfere in anything else.’

The next morning saw John de Wolfe at the castle at the crack of dawn, after an almost sleepless night worrying about Nesta and the implacable resolve of Richard de Revelle to blame her for the killing at the Bush.

In the cold morning light of his gatehouse chamber, he told Gwyn and Thomas what had transpired the previous evening when he had confronted the sheriff.

‘Thank God my wife had enough compassion to persuade her brother to lock Nesta in an empty chamber on the upper floor of the keep, rather than in that hellhole in the undercroft. Gabriel’s wife will attend her and at least see that she is fed until I can get her released.’

‘What about the bloody sheriff?’ growled Gwyn. ‘Is there no chance of him coming to his senses over this?’

John shook his head. ‘He has the bit between his teeth, aided by that damned precentor. This is a heaven-sent opportunity for them to get even with me for hounding them about their treacherous sympathy for Prince John.’

Thomas looked even more miserable than usual, hunched on his stool, wringing his hands in anguish. ‘How can we save dear Nesta, Crowner? I fear for her very life, now that the sheriff is set upon making her a scapegoat.’

‘Find the real killer, this Simon Claver! I tried to persuade de Revelle last night that this was the obvious way, but his mind is as closed as his ears. He refused even to countenance a search for the man, saying that the word of an imbecile lad was no grounds for looking for anyone other than the landlady of the tavern!’

‘But where the hell would we start looking, Crowner?’ observed Gwyn glumly.

‘That stolen relic is of no value to the thief until he can sell it,’ pointed out Thomas. ‘He has to find a buyer, and the only people interested would be religious houses.’

De Wolfe drummed his fingers on his table. ‘He may first have gone back to his outlaw gang in the forest. I couldn’t persuade the sheriff to lift a finger against them, he claimed it was a waste of effort.’

Gwyn scratched a few fleas from his unruly red thatch as he thought.

‘Gabriel told me that de Revelle was leaving this morning for his manor at Tiverton, to spend a few nights with his wife, God help her. Maybe we can persuade Ralph Morin to take out a posse while the sheriff’s away?’

The ‘posse comitatus’ was an invention of old King Henry, who authorized each county to mount bands of armed men to seek out wrongdoers when necessary. The idea appealed to the coroner, and he went off to the keep to seek his friend the constable, who commanded all the men-at-arms of the castle garrison. Though Ralph had no love for de Revelle, he was at first uneasy about going against his wishes, but John persuaded him that the sheriff had not actually prohibited a search, only shown a lack of enthusiasm.

By the tenth hour, a score of soldiers, led by Morin and Sergeant Gabriel, were marching over the drawbridge of Rougemont and meeting up at the South Gate with the coroner, his officer and another twenty volunteers from the Bush. These had rallied around to try to help the plight of their favourite innkeeper, and with a motley collection of swords, pikes and daggers, they tagged on behind the column of soldiers. All were on foot, as horses were of no use for combing the woods for fugitives.

In less than two hours, the posse was in position, half the men forming a line that entered the forest from the side where the chapman had been killed, the rest two miles away, approaching from the main track to the north. The men-at-arms, dressed in partial battledress of iron helmets and boiled leather jerkins, alternated with the city volunteers.

De Wolfe and his officer were with the southern party, the constable and his sergeant with the others. They had little hope of catching all the scattered outlaws, who infested every patch of forest, but within three hours their pincer movement through the almost bare trees and scrub managed to grab two men, one found cowering in a bramble thicket, the other up a tree. The latter betrayed his presence when the branch broke and he fell with a scream and a crash within fifty yards of the nearest soldier. With a twisted ankle, he was unable to make a run for it, and when the two lines of searchers met up, de Wolfe and Morin decided that, given the failing light, they had done all they could that day.

The two captives, desperately frightened, ragged wrecks of humanity, were forced to their knees inside the wide circle of their hunters. As outlaws, they were well aware that their lives were forfeit and it was only the means of their deaths which lay in the balance.

John stood over them, sliding his great sword partly out of its scabbard, then slamming it back again.

‘We are entitled to strike off your heads here and now!’ he rasped. ‘The men I appoint to do it will be pleased to earn an easy five shillings’ bounty. So is there anything you have to say that might delay that moment?’

Nothing could have been more effective in loosening their tongues than the sight and sound of that sword, and within a few moments John learned that Gervase and Simon Claver had indeed been members of their outlaw band.

‘Simon reckoned he was entitled to a bigger share of Gervase’s loot, so he said he was going after him in Exeter,’ quavered the older captive, a toothless scarecrow with some pustulous disease of his hands and neck.

‘Just before he left, Gervase let slip the fact that some relic in a little box might be valuable,’ croaked the younger man with the injured leg.

‘That set Simon thinking and he left us the next day.’

The cavalcade set off for Exeter, the older man half supporting, half dragging the other along the track, both destined for the cells in Rougemont until they were dispatched on the next hanging day.

As the four leaders marched at the head of the column on the four miles back to the city, they discussed the results of their expedition.

‘It’s clear what happened now and we know the identity of the two villains,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘Ralph, there’s no reason now why Nesta should be kept locked in that damned chamber!’

The constable pulled at his beard, worried at his own position in all this. ‘I agree, John, but I can’t let her out until de Revelle gets back. I’ll be in enough trouble with him as it is, taking a troop of soldiers out of the city against his inclinations.’

‘He’ll be back in a couple of days, Crowner,’ said Gabriel, soothingly. ‘My wife will see she’s comfortable until then.’

John gave an angry grunt and Gwyn tactfully changed the subject.

‘What about finding this bastard Simon Claver? That would really put Nesta in the clear.’

De Wolfe rasped a hand over his black stubble as they walked faster in the gathering dusk, anxious to get to the South Gate before it closed at curfew. ‘Nesta said that this Gervase claimed he was going to get a bed at Buckfast Abbey the next night, though I wouldn’t trust anything he said.’

‘As your clerk mentioned, he has to sell the relic to a bunch of monks or priests to realize any profit on his theft,’ added Ralph Morin. ‘But from the direction that chapman was going, he could have been aiming east, to sell it somewhere like Wells Cathedral or Glastonbury Abbey.’

Gwyn nodded his shaggy head. ‘That old fellow in Clyst reckoned the dying man mentioned Glastonbury just before he passed out.’

With this information as the only clues they possessed, the coroner and the constable agreed to search in both directions as soon as the city gates opened in the morning.